Drunk fighting

Rules for fighting while drunk, to resist supernatural mental influences or just because that dwarf at the inn was looking at you funny.

Once upon a time my players were facing a demon that had the power to hypnotise people into a dream state and control them while they were in the trance. One of the characters had already come very close to death that way before they realised what they were up against. They had to physically restrain her from climbing into a hospital furnace while dreaming that she was dead. Their most useful resource on demonology was a semi-reliable book of centuries-old witchcraft. They asked me how the witch hunters of olden times resisted demon illusion powers and I tossed off a line about going into battle roaring drunk.

It was meant to be a throwaway that clearly wasn't practical in modern times, but they grabbed onto the idea and ran with it, so I improvised a system for drunk fighting. The battle that followed was awesome. Here's a refined version of the system I used that day.

Resisting

At the start of each round players decide how many points to sacrifice from their attribute bonuses to a pool to resist Charm-like spells and Charisma-based attacks. Points put into the pool cannot be recovered until the character sobers up. Each point spent from the pool gains +2 to saving throws against influence. Bonuses may stack.

Points can be taken from Dex, Int, Wis and AC. Players can take their bonuses as far into the negatives as they like.

If the characters are not resisting mental influence and just brawling drunk (eg. a tavern fight, crashing a wedding or smuggled themselves into a fortress in wine barrels) then they automatically lose 1 point from a random bonus until they reach -1 to Dex, Int and Wis rolls.

Characters regain their normal stats after a night's sleep.

Damage

When characters take HP damage, if the amount of damage is odd it gets added to a tally instead of being immediately taken from HP. The character feels nothing and instead suffers that damage at the end of the fight.

If this takes the character below 0 HP, the excess comes off Str. This regenerates at the normal pace for attribute damage in your game. If Str is taken to 0 or less, the character can use any remaining points in the resistance pool for bonuses to a death saving roll. On success, the character is brought up to 1 Str and 1 HP. On failure, death.

Charisma

While drunk, characters subtract their normal Cha bonus from 5. The result is their new Cha bonus until they sober up. Characters that are normally charismatic become obnoxious and crass. Characters who are normally reserved become charming and outgoing.

Equipment loss

The next day when the characters are recovering and complaining about their hangovers, they each roll 1d6:

1 - 3: Nothing lost.

4, 5: A minor item lost.

6: A weapon, piece of armour or some other important possession lost.

These may be recoverable from the battlefield, or may be gone for ever.

Fantasy X-Men

In a previous post I mentioned an idea about ordinary characters having minor superpowers because they're polymorphed monsters and don't know it. Each character would have an ability stemming from their monster nature and a taboo that would undo the spell if they transgressed it.

The original idea was for each party member to be the only one who knew about another member's taboo, and have the responsibility for making sure they didn't break it. The monsters would effectively be each other's guards. However, I'm not that fond of games that give you knowledge your character doesn't have. Where's the fun for the player in uncovering the mystery?

So instead I think it should be handled by the GM. Players don't even need to know what sort of polymorphed creature they are. They can just be told that they always have advantage on certain skill tests, or that they have a supernatural power that works once per level per day. And supernaturally punished when they break their taboo, which they also don't know about.

I looked through the B/X Essentials monster manual for creatures that were A) living and B) intelligent and found a bigger list than I expected. Some are close enough to be cousin species, but that's an advantage if it gives a player the chance to form a completely wrong theory about what they are.

As of right now, I'm going simple and saying that breaking a taboo causes a psychic shock that does 1d6 HP damage, but it could easily be expanded into another subsystem. Maybe it damages the illusion and once you realise what you really are Wizard X unleashes the hounds of Tindalos to destroy you.

1)Bugbear
Bonus: Advantage on stealth rolls for character and anyone accompanying.
Taboo: Labour for wages.

2) Centaur
Bonus: Movement rate tripled.
Taboo: Carrying a person.

3) Djinn
Bonus: Breath weapon. Any creature of lower hit dice in a 5-space cone ahead of you is knocked prone. Equal hit dice are driven back 1 space.
Taboo: Go underground.

4) Doppelganger
Bonus: Imitate a person's voice and mannerisms perfectly. +2 bonus to disguising yourself as someone specific.
Taboo: Speak your own name.

5) Dragon
Bonus: +1 spell slot which can be cast hit dice x times per day.
Taboo: Give up a prized possession.

6) Dryad
Bonus: Advantage on woodcraft skill tests.
Taboo: Light a fire.

7) Efreet
Bonus: Instinctive understanding of fire - how to start it, how it spreads, how to contain it.
Taboo:Immerse yourself in water.

8) Gargoyle
Bonus: Wakefulness. You're immune to charm person and sleep spells and can stay awake for hit dice x days with no harmful effect.
Taboo: Sleep in a bed.

9) Giant
Bonus: Advantage on strength rolls.
Taboo: Act humble.

10) Gnoll
Bonus: Advantage on tracking rolls
Taboo: Eat before the party leader does.

11) Goblin
Bonus: Advantage on caving skill tests.
Taboo: Pay for something honestly.

12) Harpy
Bonus: Cast Charm Person hit dice x daily.
Taboo: Let a personal offence go unpunished.

13) Hobgoblin
Bonus: Advantage on stealth rolls for character and anyone accompanying.
Taboo: Enter combat without backup.

14) Invisible stalker
Bonus: Automatically surprise on your first attack in any combat.
Taboo: Alert someone to your presence.

15) Kobold
Bonus: +2 AC without armour, advantage on rolls to dodge.
Taboo: Attack an opponent from the front.

16) Lizardman
Bonus: You can slow your metabolism at will, entering a meditation-like state you can dismiss instantly. You need no food or water in this state.
Taboo: Kill a snake.
 
17) Lycanthrope
Bonus: Improved senses, especially smell. You can only be surprised on 1-in-6.
Taboo: Handle silver.

18) Manticore
Bonus: Poison bite. Hit dice x times per day. Victims must save or die.
Taboo: Speak words of comfort.

19) Medusa
Bonus: Cast Sleep on one target hit dice x times per day, by making eye contact.
Taboo: Look into your own reflected eyes.

20) Merman
Bonus: Advantage on swimming tests, hold breath for 2 + hit dice x minutes.
Taboo: Taste brine.

21) Minotaur
Bonus: You can handle weapons as if you were a larger creature - eg. weild a two-handed sword one-handed.
Taboo: Handle ceramics.

22) Nixie
Bonus: Cast Charm on up to hit dice x animals, once per day.
Taboo: Kill an animal.

23) Ogre
Bonus: Advantage on strength rolls.
Taboo: Share food.

24) Orc
Bonus: Advantage on caving skill tests.
Taboo: Enter combat without backup.

25) Pixie
Bonus: A successful save vs petrification nullifies all fall damage, otherwise fall damage is reduced by half.
Taboo: Harm a winged creature.

26) Salamander
Bonus: A successful save vs breath nullifies all heat or cold damage (choose which at character creation), otherwise damage is reduced by half.
Taboo: Use your opposing force as a tool or weapon.

27) Sprite
Bonus: Cast a minor curse up to hit dice x times per day. The curse target will suffer a clumsy accident, have a tool break, or some other distracting inconvenience.
Taboo: Speak a compliment.

28) Treant
Bonus: Up to hit dice x times per day a tree will find a way to help you - drop a branch in the right place, bear fruit out of season, etc.
Taboo: Cut wood.

29) Troglodyte
Bonus: Advantage on climbing tests.
Taboo: Sleep under open sky.

30) Troll
Bonus: When you roll for healing, use the rolled value or your number of hit dice, whichever is better.
Taboo: Handle open flame.

The why of roads

If you come across a road that's not marked on your map, all you really know about it is that leads to, or from, some place that people wanted to be.

This road leads to:

1. A city
2. The coast
3. A market town
4. A keep
5. A ruin
6. A demihuman community

It's a:

1. Paved military road
2. Graveled trade road
3. Muddy parallel wheel ruts left by farm carts
4. Trampled grassy track cleared of trees
5. Forgotten and badly-maintained highway
6. Raised wooden boards above marshland

It passes:

1. Through the foothills of a mountain range, winding between the peaks
2. Along the bank of a fast and wide river
3. Across bare ground at the border of a desert
4. Along the edge of coastal cliffs where heavy waves break on rocks at the base down below
5. Through dense woodland where sunlight never penetrates to the forest floor
6. Through a deep valley that reduces the range of vision and hampers lookouts

A standout feature is:

1. Toll houses a day's ride apart
2. Guard posts garrisoned to hunt bandits and highwaymen
3. Robber gangs preying on traveling merchants
4. Coach inns of varying quality
5. A section cut through a dangerous forest
6. Tales of ghostly riders

 The most frequent travelers are:

1. Mail coaches crewed by tough and well-armed drivers
2. Merchants driving covered wagons full of wares for trade
3. Farmers delivering produce to nearby communities
4. Pilgrims visiting holy sites
5. Companies of soldiers relocating to new duties
6. Traveling entertainers

Travelers should watch out for:

1. Shopkeepers inflating prices for out-of-towners
2. Wild animals
3. Squads of fighters from two different factions who each claim jurisdiction over the road
4. Monsters
5. Weather that makes the road impassable
6. Slavers and military press gangs

Destiny combat

Image by Pete Linforth

I've been noodling with a concept I call destiny combat, which is how the very wise and powerful get their revenge on each other. The idea is that with a great deal of planning and effort, you can ensure a rival fulfils their destiny in the absolute worst way possible.

The foundational premise is that everyone has a destiny, whether it be large or small. You're fated to live and die in a particular way, and that's unchangeable. But while the outline may be fixed, the details are forever changing. That's why fortune-tellers are unreliable and oracles are mystical and cryptic. They can only see your current future and by the time it arrives it may have changed.

The outline of your destiny is important to the world, but it's the details that are important to you personally. For example, your outline might be that you're destined to inspire generations of the world's great philosophers. That might be through founding one of the great colleges, with a strong tradition of sharing knowledge... or by getting tortured so horribly that a religion forms around it. Obviously you'd prefer one. Your enemies might prefer the other.

The very powerful are capable of reading destiny (theirs and others) but they usually don't. In the process of looking hard at someone's fate, it gets fixed in place. Both the outline and the details. That might mean the good outcome gets selected, but then again it might not. It's a heavy responsibility to bear. And if you fix your own bad outcome in place you'll have good reason to regret being so curious.

Naturally, wizards will ward their own destiny to prevent someone else examining it. Even so, there are ways and means to get partial but accurate glimpses of a future without running into a ward or altering fate. Certain places, times and rituals you can follow. To outsiders, the process seems even more vague and mystical than normal wizardry. Use them properly and you can observe a fate like a bird in your peripheral vision, ready to fly away if you turn your head. You can make guesses about it based on that, and maybe nudge it a little to move in the direction you want.

This is the work of years, or perhaps even lifetimes. Great sages trying to uncover and fix their own good end in place, and infer from unexpected changes who’s working against them and how.

In a world like this, what happens to people who achieve their great destiny and survive? If you believe that the workings of destiny are as perfect and omnipresent as physics, they probably just live quietly until they die unremarkably. In a world where it’s a legitimate threat that a god might drunkenly lose your planet in a game of cards, things might not be so neat. I think a party of former Prophecied Heroes would be perfect agents for a high-powered wizard. Cut loose by destiny, unpredictable and un-divineable. And it makes sense of the way players will stomp all over a GM’s plans for them.

And it makes this scene possible:

“You’re a former chosen one of the prophecy? So am I!”
“And me! I fulfilled a prophecy. What about you?”
“Well, yes. But I don’t like to talk about it. There were spiders.”
“‘Scuse me, I just recently fulfilled quite a big prophecy--“
“Shut up, assassin. We’re still turning you in for the bounty.”